The Tale of Five Heirs

Chapter Eight, in which the prisoner changes unexpectedly

Kelvin's knees hurt as he crouched in the common room of the Bell and Crown Inn. Skeena was squatting to his right and Yago was lurking on his left. In front of him a child of about ten was poking his sister, who was whining at him.

"What do we do if Tamara doesn't come back?" Ronnith asked.

"How about we send Yago to tame the dragon?" asked Skeena, looking at Yago with a sly smile.

"Yeah," Kelvin put in. "You're supposed to be a dragon tamer, why are you hiding down here with us?"

"I'm not really needed up there," Yago responded, "look—"

At that moment, Tamara came into view walking down the staircase. Her skin and clothes were white-grey, covered in ash and dragon blood. Even so, she was smiling. In one hand she was carrying a pile of blankets, and in the other dragging what appeared to be a sack of potatoes with armor on it. Behind her came a young woman who looked like a less badass version of Tamara, presumably her sister.

The people in the common room who had been crouching in fear moments ago began getting to their feet and shouting questions at Tamara.

"What happened to the dragon?" one man asked.

Tamara tossed the blankets she was carrying to the woman with the three babies, saying, "I killed it." Tamara's statement washed over the crowd in a brief moment of shocked silence before everyone erupted in jubilant cheers.

She slayed a dragon. Kelvin was shocked, but more than that he was excited. A complete, freshly dead dragon specimen!

As Tamara and her sister were embraced by their obviously grateful parents, Kelvin rushed up the stairs. He ran a quick lap around the second floor, seeing much destruction and burnt furniture, but no dragons. Kelvin started up the staircase to the third floor, but then he stopped in his tracks. Lying on the staircase was the head of the dragon. Kelvin yelped in excitement. Both of the dragon's eyes had been poked out, and one of them was oozing a yellowish fluid.

Kelvin approached the large dragon head and, grabbing it by the upper lip, lifted its great jaws open. He shoved a piece of the broken banister into the dead beast's mouth to hold it open and stepped back to inspect. The inside of the dragon's mouth was wet and hot, and peachy pink in color. Along its scaly jowls protruded about twenty curved fangs.

Kelvin was furious that he had lost his book on dragon anatomy. There was one part in it where it described how you could tell a dragon's age by how many teeth it had. Kelvin knew this one had to be a younger one of some kind—some dragons had hundreds of teeth.

He carefully edged around the dragon's scaly head and followed the dragon's neck up the staircase and along the floor to the joint where the wings and forelegs began. The scales shimmered and reflected with a strangely fiery light. Kelvin was fascinated but he thought he should probably return to the others down below.

As he reentered the common room, Kelvin noticed that a large number of Noremont soldiers had arrived. One was helping a woman carry her three babies, and some were surveying the damage in the inn, but, to Kelvin's dismay, there was a group of five or so who appeared to be engaged in a heated argument with Skeena. The armored lump, apparently a Dragon Tribesman, was slumped in between them.

Kelvin stepped closer. "I am the Queen's spymaster, and I have a right to take a prisoner and do with him as I like!" Skeena was shouting.

"I've never heard of the Queen's spymaster, and the protocol of immediate execution for all Dragon Tribesmen has never been questioned," replied the highest ranking soldier of the bunch.

"Well I'm questioning it!" Skeena shouted back.

Just then Yago sauntered out of nowhere and put his arm around the soldier's shoulder. "Jenny," he said happily, "it's so good to see you again!"